couples counseling

Let’s consider the confines of an open marriage. Yes, an open marriage. Yes, the kind where you and your spouse can date and have sex with others, outside the marriage. This past month, The Times Magazine published a challenging and intriguing article by Susan Dominus that...

Long marriages. “Breaking up and starting fresh, which everyone around you seems to be doing, can begin to look like a wonderful and altogether logical proposition. . .” Humph. The title was attention-getting enough when a few years back Ada Calhoun wrote those words...

There are three slightly subtle scenarios for when to seek infertility counseling. Subtle only in that they creep in on us, and then they sound off like a wake-up call. Wouldn’t it be nice to detect the scenario before the sirens? But, wait. Even before these more common...

When it comes to a relationship, the majority of us seem to slide into them. Unfortunately, sliding is not deciding. It is a route to mid-life crises. For instance, take living together: Researchers at the University of Colorado found that two-thirds of us just sort of slide...

Ever feel like you might as well be auditioning for love and attention on NBC’s show The Voice? We might not be holding a mic, singing for a little t.l.c. and approval. But, we do long for affection, emotional support, solidarity, humor, undivided listening, sex and so on....

“How a Bird Feeder Revived My Marriage” is a guest-post written by TISTA SEN. I post it here because decades of a relationship bring lonely, grumpy times. Yet, Tista Sen reminds us how the little even-unwanted things might revive our relationships. How a Bird Feeder...

One could suppose that The Five Languages of Love: The Secret to Love that Lasts, written decades ago by Gary Chapman, is still a best-seller because we’re all trying to ensure our everlasting love–and his title promises that, though are we sure any book can deliver?...

“Superiority and subsequently contempt is the kiss of death,” says Dr. John Gottman, a leading expert in the empirical research of marriages. What’s worse is that most of us don’t even notice it’s earliest emergence in our relationship. It’s...

In the earliest sessions of couples counseling, I ask married couples to tell me about their wedding. Inevitably, as they recount things like the engagement proposal, the party’s caterer, the guest list and the drama, something more trickles out: a constellation of hidden...

Try clapping your hands, but with only one hand. Exactly. It takes two. Happy couples detect and respond to their partner’s everyday, ordinary efforts for attention, humor, affection, emotional support, solidarity, sex and so on, twice as much as unhappy couples. (Studies show...